Opera in German
Opera in German is that of the German-speaking countries, which include Germany, Austria, and the historic German states that pre-date those countries.
German-language opera appeared remarkably quickly after the birth of opera itself in Italy. The first Italian opera was Jacopo Peri's Dafne of 1598. In 1627, Heinrich Schütz provided the music for a German translation of the same libretto. Yet during much of the 17th and 18th centuries German-language opera would struggle to emerge from the shadow of its Italian-language rival, with leading German-born composers such as Handel and Gluck opting to work in foreign traditions such as opera seria.
Some Baroque composers, such as Reinhard Keiser, did try to challenge Italian dominance, and the theatre principal Abel Seyler became an eager promoter of German opera in the 1770s, but it was only with the appearance of Mozart that a lasting tradition of serious German-language opera was established. Mozart took the simple, popular genre of Singspiel and turned it into something far more sophisticated. Beethoven followed his example with the idealistic Fidelio; and with Der Freischütz of 1821, Weber established a uniquely German form of opera under the influence of Romanticism. Weber's innovations were eclipsed by those of Wagner, one of the most revolutionary and controversial figures in musical history. Wagner strove to achieve his ideal of opera as "music drama", eliminating all distinction between aria and recitative, employing a complex web of leitmotifs and vastly increasing the power and richness of the orchestra. Wagner also drew on Germanic mythology in his huge operatic cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.
After Wagner, opera could never be the same again, so great was his influence. The most successful of his followers was Richard Strauss. Opera flourished in German-speaking lands in the early 20th century in the hands of figures such as Hindemith, Busoni and Weill until Adolf Hitler's seizure of power forced many composers into silence or exile. After World War II young opera writers were inspired by the example of Schoenberg and Berg who had pioneered modernist techniques such as atonality and serialism in the earlier decades of the century. Composers at work in the field of opera today include Hans Werner Henze.
As the names of Mozart, Weber, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Berg indicate, Germany and Austria have one of the strongest operatic traditions in European culture. This is also evidenced by the large number of opera houses, particularly in Germany where almost every major city has its own theatre for staging such works, as well as internationally renowned operatic events such as the Salzburg Festival.
Baroque era
Birth
The world's first opera was Dafne by Jacopo Peri, which appeared in Florence in 1598. Three decades later Heinrich Schütz set the same libretto in a translation by the poet Martin Opitz, thus creating the first ever German-language opera. The music to Schütz's Dafne is now lost and details of the performance are sketchy, but it is known to have been written to celebrate the marriage of Landgrave Georg II of Hessen-Darmstadt to Princess Sophia Eleonora of Saxony in Torgau in 1627. As in Italy, the first patrons of opera in Germany and Austria were royalty and the nobility, and they tended to favour composers and singers from south of the Alps. Antonio Cesti was particularly successful, providing the huge operatic extravaganza Il pomo d'oro for the imperial court in Vienna in 1668. Opera in Italian would continue to exercise a considerable sway over German-speaking lands throughout the Baroque and Classical periods. Nevertheless, native forms were developing too. In Nuremberg in 1644, Sigmund Staden produced the "spiritual pastorale", Seelewig, which foreshadows the Singspiel, a genre of German-language opera in which arias alternate with spoken dialogue. Seelewig was a moral allegory inspired by the example of contemporary school dramas and is the first German opera whose music has survived.[1][2][3]
Hamburg 1678–1738
Another important development was the founding of the
Other early opera houses in Germany included the
Opera seria, Singspiel, melodrama, early serious German opera
The other leading German composers of the time tended to follow Handel's example. This was because the courts of the various German states favoured opera in Italian. In 1730 the chief proponent of opera seria, the Italian librettist
Deprived of aristocratic patronage until the mid-1770s, opera in German was forced to look to the general public to survive. This meant theatrical companies had to tour from town to town. The Singspiel became the most popular form of German opera, especially in the hands of the composer Johann Adam Hiller. Hiller's 1766 reworking of the Singspiel Die verwandelten Weiber was a landmark in the history of the genre, although his most famous work would be Die Jagd (1770). These Singspiele were comedies mixing spoken dialogue and singing, influenced by the similar genres of the ballad opera in England and the opéra comique in France. Often having sentimental plots and extremely simple music, Singspiele were no match for contemporary opera serias in artistic sophistication.
The 1770s marked an important decade in the history of German-language opera. The theatre company of Abel Seyler pioneered serious German-language opera, and Seyler commissioned operas by Hiller, Georg Benda, Anton Schweitzer and other composers.[10][11] A milestone of German opera was Anton Schweitzer's Alceste, with a libretto by Wieland and commissioned by Seyler, which premiered in 1773 in Weimar.[12] Alceste was called "a model for German opera" by Ernst Christoph Dressler[13] and has been described as the first serious German opera.[14] It was also in the 1770s that composers, like Georg Benda, began experimenting with melodrama, a type of music theatre which some commentators saw as a viable alternative to opera.[15] Early melodramas that proved popular with theatre troupes throughout German-speaking Europe included Benda's Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea (both premiered in 1775). Other important contributions to a growing repertoire of German operas appeared shortly after. This includes Günther von Schwarzburg, a through-composed opera noted then as now for its topic taken from German history, by composer Ignaz Holzbauer and librettist Anton Klein which premiered in 1777. An increasing amount of operas originally set to Italian and French texts by composers like André Ernest Modeste Grétry were translated and adopted for performance in German. By the end of the decade, German opera could be heard throughout Central Europe owing in part to travelling theatres and German states that began supporting Nationaltheater that further developed the repertoire, such as those founded in Mannheim and Vienna.[15] Alongside those already mentioned above, notable composers of German-language opera from the 1770s and 1780s include Johann André, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Christian Gottlob Neefe, Ignaz Umlauf, and Ernst Wilhelm Wolf. With successful works that appeared on stages across Germany, like Der Doktor und Apotheker, Ditters was a particularly successful composer of German opera between the mid-1780s and mid-1790s.
Classical era
Mozart's Singspiele
At the end of the 18th century a composer who would permanently change the German operatic tradition would emerge:
Beethoven and Fidelio
The greatest German composer of the next generation, Beethoven, seized on The Magic Flute's blend of domestic comedy and high seriousness for his only opera, Fidelio, the story of a devoted wife who saves her husband from political imprisonment. The years following the French Revolution of 1789 had been some of the most turbulent in European history. In Fidelio, Beethoven wanted to express the ideals of that Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity. He was also inspired by contemporary French works, particularly the rescue operas of Luigi Cherubini. Beethoven was arguably not a natural composer of opera and, although Fidelio was premiered in 1805, it was not until 1814 that he produced its final version. Nevertheless, Fidelio is widely regarded as a masterpiece and is one of the key works in the German repertoire.[23]
German Romantic opera
Early Romanticism
In the early years of the nineteenth century, the vast cultural movement known as Romanticism began to exert an influence over German composers. The Romantics showed a keen interest in the Middle Ages as well as German folklore. The fairy tale collections of the Brothers Grimm and the rediscovered Medieval German epic the Nibelungenlied were major sources of inspiration for the movement. There was also often a quest for a distinctively German identity, influenced by the new nationalism which had arisen in the wake of the Napoleonic invasions. Romanticism was already firmly established in German literature with writers such as Tieck, Novalis, Eichendorff and Clemens Brentano. One of the most famous German Romantic authors, E. T. A. Hoffmann, was also a music theorist and a composer in his own right and in 1816 he produced an opera, Undine, in Berlin. Another important early Romantic opera was Faust by Louis Spohr (also 1816). Both Hoffmann and Spohr took the basic form of the Singspiel as their starting point but began to group the individual numbers into extended scenes. They also employed "reminiscence motifs", recurring musical themes associated with characters or concepts in the opera, which would pave the way for Wagner's use of the leitmotif.[24][25]
Weber
The major breakthrough in the history of German Romantic opera was Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber, premiered in Berlin on 18 June 1821. Weber resented the Europe-wide dominance of the Italian operas of Rossini and wanted to establish a uniquely German style of opera. He turned to German folk songs and folklore for inspiration; Der Freischütz is based on a tale from the Gespensterbuch ("Book of Wraiths") of Apel and Laun concerning a marksman who makes a pact with the Devil. Weber's strong point was his striking ability to evoke atmosphere through orchestral colour. From the very first bars of the overture, it is obvious we are in the primeval forests of Germany. The highlight of the opera is the chilling Wolf's Glen Scene in which the hero Max makes his deal with the Devil. Der Freischütz was immensely popular, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe. Weber never really achieved his full potential as an opera composer due to his early death from tuberculosis and his poor choice of libretti. His major German opera after Der Freischütz, Euryanthe (1823), suffers from a particularly weak text and is rarely staged nowadays. Yet Euryanthe marks another important stage in the development of serious German opera. Weber completely eliminated spoken dialogue, producing a "through-composed" work where the distinction between recitative and aria is becoming blurred. Its lessons would not be lost on future composers, including Richard Wagner.[26][27][28][25]
Other composers of the time
Weber's most important successor in the field of Romantic opera was
Mention should be made of two great composers of the era who wrote their major works in other genres yet also composed operas: Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann. Schubert wrote over a dozen operas, mostly in the Singspiel style. Hardly any were performed during the composer's lifetime. Schumann only wrote one opera, Genoveva, first staged in Leipzig in 1850. Though praised by Liszt, it failed to win lasting success. The verdict on both these composer's operas has generally been that, though they contain excellent music, they have too many dramatic weaknesses to be acclaimed as great stage works.[29][30]
Wagner
Late Romantic opera
After Wagner
Wagner's innovations cast an immense shadow over subsequent composers, who struggled to absorb his influence while retaining their own individuality. One of the most successful composers of the following generation was
Other composers of the era who tried their hand at opera include Hugo Wolf (Der Corregidor, 1896) and Wagner's own son Siegfried.[34]
Richard Strauss
Other late Romantics
Other composers styled "late Romantic", such as
Heyday of operetta
In the late nineteenth century, a new, lighter form of opera, operetta, became popular in Vienna. Operettas had immediately attractive tunes, comic (and often frivolous) plots and used spoken dialogue between the musical "numbers". Viennese operetta was inspired by the fashion for the French operettas of Jacques Offenbach. Das Pensionat (1860) by Franz von Suppé is generally regarded as the first important operetta in the German language, but by far the most famous example of the genre is Die Fledermaus (1874) by Johann Strauss. Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow (1905) and Emmerich Kálmán's Die Csárdásfürstin (1915) were other massive hits. Other composers who worked in this style include Oscar Straus and Sigmund Romberg.[37]
Modernism: Second Viennese School
Following the example of Wagner, Richard Strauss, Zemlinsky and Schreker had pushed traditional tonality to the absolute limits. Now a new group of composers appeared in Vienna who wanted to take music beyond. Operatic
The two operas of Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg, Wozzeck and Lulu (left incomplete at his death) share many of the same characteristics described above, though Berg combined his highly personal interpretation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique with melodic passages of a more traditionally tonal nature (quite Mahlerian in character). This perhaps partially explains why his operas have remained in standard repertory, despite their controversial music and plots.
1918–1945: Weimar Germany, Inter-war Austria, Third Reich
The years following World War I saw German and Austrian culture flourishing in spite of the surrounding political turmoil. Late Romantic composers were still at work alongside the avowed modernists Schoenberg and Berg. The Italian-born Ferruccio Busoni ploughed an individual furrow, attempting to fuse Bach and the avant-garde, Mediterranean and Germanic culture in his music. He never lived to finish his most significant opera Doktor Faust (1925). Paul Hindemith began his operatic career with short, scandalous pieces such as Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen ("Murder, Hope of Women") before turning to Bach, as Busoni had done. Hindemith saw Bach-inspired "neo-classicism" as a way of curbing the excesses of late Romanticism. Cardillac (1925) was his first work in this vein. Hindemith was also interested in putting contemporary life on the stage in his operas (a concept called Zeitoper), as was Ernst Krenek whose Jonny spielt auf (1927) has a jazz violinist as its hero. Kurt Weill reflected life in Weimar Germany in a more overtly political way. His most famous collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera (1928), was both a scandal and an immense box-office success.
Since 1945
Composers writing after World War II had to find a way of coming to terms with the destruction caused by the Third Reich. The modernism of Schoenberg and Berg proved attractive to young composers, since their works had been banned by the Nazis and were free of any taint of the former regime. Bernd Alois Zimmermann looked to the example of Berg's Wozzeck for his only opera Die Soldaten (1965), and Aribert Reimann continued the tradition of expressionism with his Shakespearean Lear (1978). Perhaps the most versatile and internationally famous post-war German opera composer is Hans Werner Henze, who has produced a series of works which mix Bergian influences with those of Italian composers such as Verdi.[citation needed] Examples of his operas are Boulevard Solitude, The Bassarids (to a libretto by W. H. Auden) and Das verratene Meer. Karlheinz Stockhausen set off in an even more avant-garde direction with his enormous operatic cycle based on the seven days of the week, Licht (1977–2003). Giselher Klebe created an extensive body of work in the operatic genre based on literary works.[41] Other leading composers still producing operas today include Wolfgang Rihm and Olga Neuwirth.[42][43]
See also
Notes and references
- ^ Parker 1994, pp. 31–32.
- ^ Grout 2003, "Early German Opera", pp. 121–131.
- ^ Holden 1993, Articles on Schütz and Staden..
- ^ Another prolific composer, Telemann began to eclipse Keiser as the leading opera composer in Hamburg from 1717.
- ^ Only one of Handel's German-language operas, Almira, survives in a reasonably intact state.
- ^ On the Hamburg opera: Parker 1994, pp. 32, 77–79
- ^ Grout 2003, Section on Keiser, pp. 176ff.
- ^ Holden 1993, Articles on Keiser, Mattheson and Telemann.
- ^ Booklet notes to the recording of Keiser's opera Croesus by René Jacobs.
- ISBN 3826041291
- ^ Bauman 1985, p. [page needed].
- ^ Lawrence, Richard (July 2008). "Schweitzer, A. Alceste". Gramophone. Retrieved 20 July 2017.
- ^ Hellmuth Christian Wolff (1959), "Dreßler, Ernst Christoph", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 4, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, p. 113; (full text online)
- ISBN 9004309578
- ^ a b Glatthorn 2022, p. [page needed].
- ^ Zaslaw 1989, pp. 242–247, 258–260.
- ^ Parker 1994, pp. 58–63, 98–103.
- ^ Holden 1993, Articles on Hasse, Graun and Hiller.
- ISBN 978-1-108-42689-3.
- ^ Parker 1994, pp. 118–121.
- ^ Zaslaw 1989, pp. 134–140.
- ^ Holden 1993, Article on Mozart.
- ^ Holden 1993, Article on Fidelio by David Cairns.
- ^ Parker 1994, pp. 207–209.
- ^ a b Grout 2003, "Romantic Opera in Germany", pp. 417–436.
- ^ Essay by John Warrack in the booklet to Carlos Kleiber's recording of Der Freischütz (Deutsche Grammophon, 1973)
- ^ Holden 1993, Article on Weber.
- ^ Parker 1994, pp. 209–210.
- ^ Parker 1994, pp. 212–217.
- ^ Grout 2003, "Romantic Opera in Germany", pp. 417–436. Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt strongly disagrees with dismissals of Genoveva. See the essay "Reinventing Opera" in the booklet to Harnoncourt's recording of Schumann's opera (Teldec, 1997).
- ^ Parker 1994, p. 220.
- ^ Parker 1994, "Wagner" by Barry Millington.
- ^ Holden 1993, Article on Wagner by John Deathridge.
- ^ Parker 1994, pp. 232–236.
- ^ Holden 1993, Article on Strauss.
- ^ Parker 1994, pp. 290–292.
- ^ Holden 1993, Articles on Suppé, Johann Strauss, Lehár.
- ^ "Schoenberg: Moses und Aron" by Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 5 May 2001
- ^ Parker 1994, pp. 295–300, 315–316.
- ^ Holden 1993, Article on Busoni, Hindemith, Weill.
- ^ Schäfer, Brigitte (September 2005). "Zeit als Intensität und Qualität". Neue Musikzeitung (in German). ConBrio. p. 4. Archived from the original on 2006-11-23. Retrieved 2007-12-31.
- ^ Parker 1994, pp. 324–325.
- ^ Holden 1993, Articles on Zimmermann, Reimann, Henze, Stockhausen.
Sources
- ISBN 9780521260275.
- Glatthorn, Austin (2022). Music Theatre and the Holy Roman Empire: The German Musical Stage at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-316-51249-4.
- Grout, Donald Jay (2003). A Short History of Opera (4th ed.). Columbia University Press.
- Holden, Amanda, ed. (1993). The Viking Opera Guide. Viking.
- Parker, Roger, ed. (1994). The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera. Oxford University Press.
- Zaslaw, Neal, ed. (1989). Man and Music: The Classical Era. Macmillan.
Further reading
- The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (Oxford University Press, 1992)
- ISBN 9780521235327